Of Dolls and Rifles
by caryalaciniosa
Summary: This is a short story submission originally written for a Girls' Frontline writing contest. PPSh-41 reminisces on when she joined Griffin while she brings a wounded teammate to safety.


Slowly, the doll stepped through the rubble. The smokey, oily odor of destruction hung over the town, made manifest in a fog of fine dust and soot clouding the air. It was empty in the town but for the faint shadow of the doll and the remnants of buildings, long since pounded into piles of broken concrete, glass, and brick by Griffin mortars and Sangvis artillery. As if it wasn't difficult enough to navigate through the destruction, she was weighed down by an unconscious passenger, draped across her back in a fireman's carry.

A piece of rebar skidded out from underneath PPSh-41's foot as she stepped forward. Struggling to keep her balance, the doll stumbled for a few seconds before regaining her footing. M3 was small, even for an SMG class, but was still quite the weight for Papasha to carry. Her limp body would have been easier to leave alone, but Papasha was determined to bring her comrade back whole. It was not much longer to safety – or so she told herself. The last time she had seen a map was during the mission briefing, several hours ago.

Commander Powell had wished her and the rest of her echelon well as they left on the helicopter. Their orders: distract from the Sangvis offensive and support the Griffin frontline's flank. Not an easy task by any means, but Papasha was determined and capable and hardy and she told herself that she would be able to do it. FAMAS had told her that too, had encouraged everyone in the echelon. She was a good leader, Papasha thought. Fair and professional, and a good soldier.

A good soldier. The recruiter had told her that, in St. Petersburg.

"_Every doll can be a good soldier." She had been a Jericho model, proper and stiff, but kind all the same, smiling at Papasha all of the way. "You look like a sturdy one, miss."_

"_I do?" Papasha had asked, worried. She had always thought of herself as rather frail, but the big service mechs she saw working on the outskirts of the city were not a particularly good metric to compare herself against._

"_Yes," Jericho said rather sweetly. The doll had her namesake pistol holstered on her waist, but Papasha imagined it didn't get much use. "What year were you made in?"_

"_2060." She had been made that year, it was true, but not she had not been bought until early in 2061._

"_All right, then. So you're ready to enlist?"_

"_Yes," Papasha said. That was the one thing she was sure of._

The action had not gone well. Papasha had managed to salvage only M3 from the shattered remnants of Echelon 7, and even then she was in a poor state, clothes ripped and numerous wounds spotting her body. FAMAS was nowhere to be found, and the broken corpses of Galil and AR 70 had been half-buried under piles of brick and concrete. Even now, the stutter of Griffin weapons fire split the air over the destroyed town, meaning that the fight had continued on without Papasha's echelon. She just hoped they were winning.

Her only hope was getting to an agreed-upon evacuation point. Commander Powell had set up such points, some of them with accompanying field repair stations, for dolls to fall back to if they were ever shifted off the frontlines. The battle had been waging for days now, beginning as a simple skirmish in the fields outside of the town – Papasha couldn't remember its name, something quaint – and then growing larger as both Sangvis and Griffin sent more troops to resolve it. For all their efforts, neither side had come out on top, and Papasha hoped it did not become another bloody stalemate – or worse, a numbers game, which Sangvis could win.

_Jericho had mentioned a lot of numbers that made Papasha's head spin. "We can always use more dolls," she said. "Griffin is happy that you'd like to join our ranks. I… don't think I got your name."_

"_Ah… Sasha," the doll replied. Sasha had been her name then. Her employer had chosen it for her when she was first activated. It came quite naturally, not that she had any semblance of choice in the matter._

"_A pretty name for a pretty doll," Jericho said, and Sasha smiled at the flattery despite herself. Jericho's tone was not particularly genuine, but the compliment was nice all the same. "Do you know much about being a T-doll?"_

"_Not really," Sasha admitted. She had heard about it from a coworker who had a friend who had joined the PMC and spoke highly of it. Working only with dolls, with a good salary and a great deal of freedom. Sasha was not educated, but she knew what all that meant. It meant something better than working in a bakery for the rest of her days. That was not a future she looked forward to in any way._

"_I'll give you the basics, then. You're etched to a weapon and assigned to one of the Griffin bases around the world, where you'll do whatever's needed of you. To be frank, I imagine you'll be sent to the Carpathians, Sangvis has been requiring more manpower to deal with nowadays."_

"_How do I… learn?"_

"_Learn how to be a soldier? You'll get a core installed for that. It'll help you do everything – follow orders, fire your weapon well, work with your comrades, and so on."_

"_That sounds easy."_

"_Isn't it?" Jericho smiled again. "That's the beauty of it all. With just that core and your gun, you'll be outstripping half of the world's soldiers in skill before you even get any experience under your belt."_

They did not outstrip Sangvis Ferri. In skill, maybe. But not in numbers. Waves of gray, purple, and white had assaulted Echelon 7, slowly but surely wearing away at their position. It was easy enough to spray into their ranks and see five dolls collapse with a squeeze of a trigger, tightly packed as they were, but any hole the Griffin dolls made was filled with more Sangvis. There were always more, marching in perfect rank, stepping forward to replace any one of theirs taken down by a Griffin bullet. FAMAS would fire off a grenade every once in a while, tossing Sangvis bodies into the air in the same easy way a child would flick insects off of pavement.

For all their speed and agility, Papasha and M3 were not completely safe from Sangvis fire. Their tenacity in evading enemy shots was overcome by the sheer amount of firepower the horde of dolls brought to bear on the two Griffin SMGs and their dummies, and soon enough there wasn't any cover to hide behind or even ground to dash across. FAMAS ordered them to fall back into the town, fighting as they went.

Papasha felt her slogging suddenly become easier, and she looked down to see the road underfoot mostly clear of debris. There was no rubble around her and the ground ahead lay empty but for craters, meaning that she must have left the town. It would not be far to the evacuation point, Papasha told herself. She had been walking for just under an hour just to get out of the town, and she truly had no idea how near or far she was to the point. Hopefully near – Papasha didn't know how much longer she could carry M3. How much longer she could carry herself, even. Her body had not come out of the battle unscathed, and she was not designed as a load-bearing doll. Constant strain on it might result in permanent damage. Not that Papasha really minded, so long as M3 was safe.

"_You'll be in an echelon!" Jericho said. Sasha furrowed her brow._

"_Echelon?"_

"_Like a squad," Jericho explained. "Dolls you'll be deployed with, live in dorms with, and so on."_

_The bakery gave Sasha a room with five other dolls. It was cramped and warm and dark, but at least it was dry and the bed was somewhat comfortable. Every doll had been bought secondhand, so none had the compact storage stations IOP dolls were often sold with. Sasha hoped that dolls in Griffin had nice beds, since the one she slept on was rather small._

"_How many other dolls would there be?"_

"_Oh, four others plus yourself at full strength." Sasha thought that was too much, but still better than what she knew now. And maybe the Griffin dolls would be more agreeable than her coworkers at the bakery. "So, where do you come from, Sasha?"_

"_Um– I work at one of the bakeries," the doll said vaguely. She was not particularly enthused to discuss her current state, wondering if Jericho would judge her. Surely not, Sasha thought. She probably saw lots of dolls like her come through the recruiting station. Maybe she had been one of them in the first place. "On the other side of the city."_

"_That's nice," Jericho said, smiling again. Sasha wished she would quit doing that as often as she did. "Are you applying to escape a current, poor living and/or work situation?"_

"_Yes," Sasha murmured._

The rounded tops of temporary structures were visible from around the edge of the crater Papasha was skirting. They were a mottled brown-gray, designed to blend with the land around them, sapped of color and character. Papasha had seen that same land when she first flew into the sector, all those weeks ago, when the fields were golden with the harvest and the town was full of people. All that had been swept away by a tide of artillery shells and automatons, turned into a sea of mud and craters.

The road out from the town had dissolved into nothing. Papasha once again struggled to keep standing, this time against the soft ground that pulled at her feet and slid about when she tried to resist. It was cold, very cold, but not enough to freeze anything solid, so she had a hard time going about it. Papasha recalled one winter in St. Petersburg when she had been riding through the outskirts in the bakery van with a few others to pick up supplies when the road became too muddy to drive on and got stuck. The dolls were ordered to get it out. Sasha had spent an hour getting all the mud out of her hair.

"_IOP will support your self-emancipation under the condition that you immediately sign an initial six-year contract with Griffin and Kryuger. Any breach of this contract on your part will result in its termination and your return to your location of previous employ." Jericho placed a neat stack of papers in front of Sasha, an expensive-looking pen on top. "You'll just need to sign here for the legal part. Then we'll move onto the transfer procedures–"_

"_I beg your pardon?" Sasha was in the middle of scanning the papers. "Procedures?"_

"_Inspecting your digimind, erasing any old programs from it, making sure your owner or employer doesn't have any slave protocols built in, and getting you ready to ship out. We try to get it done as fast as possible, but I understand if you need to say goodbye or collect any belongings."_

"_I see." There was not much left at the bakery for Sasha. The dolls there were more likely to be jealous than happy that she was leaving, seeing it as a betrayal. And if her employer caught so much as a whiff of what she was planning, he would ensure that she did not get out of the bakery ever again. To that end, she had brought everything she would need – the best outfit she had, some money, and an ushanka taken from the hatstand. "I'll just do it now."_

_Sasha had never signed anything before, so she just wrote her name in simple Cryillic print._

Papasha could see the guards briefly raise their weapons before identifying her as she struggled through the mud towards the repair station. The path grew hard underfoot again, but she didn't stop walking until she was right in front of the guards. Only then did the doll stand still and catch her breath. It was twilight when she looked around, the puddles of groundwater turned a discordant bright orange by the fading sunlight.

"I need the repair bay," she said all of a sudden.

"Do you want me to carry–"

"No," Papasha said, cutting off the guard doll. "It's just a little farther."

There was a human in the repair bay, a technician. Papasha did not expect to see anyone who was not a doll this near to the frontlines, but she supposed that the repair station was at a safe enough distance. She placed M3's unconscious body on the repair table and stepped back to let the technician do his job. He was not a young man, but still younger than Commander Powell, who was very grey. The doll watched him strip M3 down so he could plug all sorts of things into her, and the automated repair machine went to work.

"What happened?" he asked her from the diagnostic station. Papasha blinked and continued staring for a second before looking up to him.

"We… I think she was overexerted, or got hit by rubble, or Sangvis hit her."

"There isn't any sign of major weapons damage, so I'm thinking her core overheated," the technician said matter-of-factly. "That happens on certain models."

He asked no further questions, so Papasha sat back in the chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, the sort of simple furniture only a military would use. Despite that, the doll was grateful for the opportunity to sit. She thought of her bed in St. Petersburg. It had been small and rough and not a little lumpy, but it was at least somewhat soft. Papasha wondered when she would get to return to base.

Commander Powell was a fair commander, so she figured that once he knew of her echelon's sorry state he would immediately rotate them away from the frontline, at least until they were back in fighting shape. Then they would be sent out again… Papasha was starting to wonder if losing the battle would not be a bad idea.

"Do you know how the battle's going?" she asked aloud. The technician took a moment to reply.

"No major change. The Commander is discussing a drone strike of some sort to thin the Sangvis numbers, but I've no clue how effective it'll be."

Papasha sighed, and the technician briefly looked at her.

"How long have you been here?"

"I arrived in the sector a few months ago, but the Commander didn't send me out into a major battle until this one." M3 had seen a fight before, Galil and AR 70 were anything but green, and FAMAS had been in Griffin since before the Butterfly Incident. Papasha wondered if she had been the weak link that got the others killed. They wouldn't remember if she was when they woke up in their new bodies, though. The doll felt a blanket of unease settle over her.

"Hm," said the technician. "So I guess you're not really too experienced, then?"

"I suppose," Papasha replied distractedly. The technician went on anyway.

"Back when I was in the military, they still sent out human soldiers with the dolls. I guess they were a bit less sophisticated back then." He cast a cursory glance at M3's limp body. "And they were the military automatons, not girls."

"...right..."

"Dumb, but strong. They really got the job done… still do, really."

Papasha looked down at her legs. Her tights and boots had been torn, stained by soot, and caked in mud, in that order. The skirt and jacket, once a pretty blue and khaki, were similarly dirtied. There was no mirror, but she could believe that her face and hair and hat were gray as well… that, more than anything else, pulled at her nonexistent heart. She would have to get new clothes from the commissary, of course, and clean her ushanka… she had traded the standard-issue hat for the one she brought from St. Petersburg, the only part of her outfit she was allowed to still wear after joining up.

"I don't really get why Kryuger chose IOP dolls," the technician continued. "They're nowhere near as good as the units the military uses."

"I think we do a pretty good job," Papasha said.

"And so you do. But you are only girls, after all, and this war isn't really a place for girls. To be frank, it's the emotion modules that hold you back. It's not of any use when you're fighting automatons like Sangvis. And it's not that I look down on you girls, but it's really a different war… I don't think it's one you ought to be fighting."

"I want to fight," Papasha heard herself say, as if from a distance. She had not told Jericho as much at the recruiting station, but she had heard about the Griffin struggle with Sangvis and wanted desperately to join the fight. It meant more than her poor job at the bakery. "I want to fight."

"_What's it like?" Sasha asked Jericho when they were done with the transfer procedures. Jericho turned her head._

"_What?"_

"_Fighting, I mean. Holding a gun, shooting it…"_

_Jericho's gaze fell to the floor, and she was silent for a moment. "Well, I– it's–" She smiled weakly. "I suppose I can't really describe it."_

"_Oh," said Sasha, and she looked at Jericho's pistol. It was bright and not a little shiny, maybe even mint condition. "Did you fight Sangvis?"_

"_Yes," said Jericho, and then she didn't say anything else for a while. _


End file.
